


Sins of the Father

by Riverdaughter



Series: Luminous Beings [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Anakin's terrible dreams strike again, Ex Vader has plans for Kylo Ren, F/M, Gen, Human Disaster Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Mess, dead murder dad will get you, most of them involve having a happy childhood, pretty much everyone else is too...but they're not as willing to admit it, right now he kind of likes you though, that's right Han...if you run away from Leia her estranged, this time they might actually do some good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:14:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24083434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riverdaughter/pseuds/Riverdaughter
Summary: Anakin puts his foot down in the afterlife, because what's the point of being a literal child of the force if your kids (grandkids) are just going to repeat your mistakes?(also known as my self-indulgent reverse love-letter to disney!starwars with cameos from Obi-Wan, the Jedi Council and Force Ghosts Incorporated)
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker
Series: Luminous Beings [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1737535
Comments: 3
Kudos: 96





	1. Anakin

**Author's Note:**

> Nota Bene: Anakin and Obi-Wan are the most unreliable narrators ever...  
> Enter communication problems stage left...

“Enough” he says finally cutting through this ridiculous discussion, “There will be no more fallen Skywalkers.”

Yoda’s ears twitch and he can see Mace Windu glaring at him, which is life as usual minus the fact that they are all _dead_ and Windu actually has a legitimate reason to be suspicious of him these days. Obi-Wan just looks concerned, which is unfortunately his current default expression.

Really, it’s not like he is going to cause mass casualties here in the afterlife. For one thing, he has no idea how to kill someone who is already dead and for another he has made his own private vow that he will never take another life, even if he could.

Anakin is done killing and taking and giving nothing in return. He remembers being kind once, generous even. Offering with no expectation of reward. The Dark had taken his anger and his hate until that was almost all he was. But the Jedi had taken too, the last of his innocence, his hope and his love; leaving him defenseless against the lure of the Dark.

Regardless of either, it was Anakin himself that had made the final choice. To walk in the Light, to stumble in the Dark when he should have done neither. And for that and two decades worth of crimes, they can ask what they will of him in penance and he will do it.

Unending turmoil here in this world between living and dying, he will not complain.

Never seeing his wife or children again, that would be true penance, but he doesn’t deserve them and his daughter at least has no desire to see him ever.

An eternity of endless wandering, rebuilding what he destroyed- that he might even welcome.

This though, this is beyond the pale and…

He will not let them.

He owes atonement and he will find a way to pay it but his children will not pay for _his_ failings anymore than they already have. The sins of this father will not touch his children this time, there are still stars at his fingertips, however unworthy he may be of this power.

And he will use it, not for himself perhaps ever again. But he will stop the stars in their courses before he lets the Dark enslave another member of his family.

“Attached you still are,” sighs Yoda, “A jedi you are not.”

“A jedi I was never meant to be,” he snaps back echoing Yoda’s syntax without thinking, “Did you never stop to think what your precious prophecy might actually mean? Not what _you_ wanted it to mean but what it actually required? All light and no dark is not balance Master Yoda, just as all dark and no light is also wrong. The time of the Sith has passed but so also has that of the Jedi. Or at least the Jedi that we knew.”

He’s surrounded now, for a bunch of dead people who claim to be one with the Force an awful lot of them have stuck around here, wherever (or whatever) here was. He feels nine again, surrounded by all original council members who had once judged him unworthy (and granted he is _now_ ) and all the ones that came after too.

Maybe this is his real punishment, to have to stand here once again trying to justify himself before the Council and still failing miserably. Except now it’s far worse because he is cannot justify _anything_ about himself anymore (all the lies have been ripped away and while the truth has been freeing in its own way it also hurts horribly) and it feels like all of his defenses have crumbled into nothing and he is standing here in all his pathetic, scarred, ex-jedi, ex-sith, half-machine glory and he can’t even lie to himself anymore.

On the plus side while he fears their contempt and their detachment, he can’t possibly sink any lower than he already has. So giving them a piece of his mind in defense of his family is not as daunting as it might have been.

Besides what can they possibly do to him that he has not already done to himself?

Kit Fisto does not seem quite as judgmental as for instance Mace Windu (who is clearly not over the loss of his arm for about thirty seconds…and really Anakin managed to live with zero arms or legs for more than twenty years and he isn’t spending his afterlife glaring and making cutting remarks at Obi-Wan).

Normally he would appeal to Depa as well, especially given that she can understand something of where he is coming from but she also seems…displeased about the arm so perhaps not, and there’s also the matter of her ex-padawan and Anakin would really rather not go there.

Obi-Wan is probably on his side, he is after all nearly as fond (as a jedi-cum-old-wizard) of Anakin’s impossibly wonderful family as Anakin himself. Unluckily Obi-Wan has been difficult recently and seems caught between feeling guilty about everything wrong with Anakin and being angry _at_ Anakin for everything that is wrong with Anakin. Even worse, they can’t seem to agree on which things _are_ wrong with him.

Anakin is perfectly willing to concede that he is a monster, who murdered indiscriminately, was quite justly burned alive and probably deserves an agonizing eternity trapped in sub-par prosthetics and a claustrophobic life-support suit rather than the mere score of years he had. Obi-Wan doesn’t seem to entirely disagree on this point but he is far more vehement in pointing out all the flaws that led to the mass-murdering monster such as Anakin’s difficulty in meditating, or making casual acquaintances or following the Code and especially letting go of his wife and his mother and Ahsoka and the 501st and Obi-Wan himself.

Since all these last points are currently the only parts of himself that Anakin considers half-way decent, he not so cordially disagrees and in thus tactically, relying on Obi-Wan to back him up regarding this continuing issue of his attachments would be unwise, (even if he liked Luke enough to keep Vader and the Emperor away from him…) Anakin’s feelings on his son being trained as an unwitting patricide are better left unexplored. He may be dead but it’s probably better not to test what sort of havoc he can wreck if he loses control.

That’s another thing he is fully intending to prevent. No Skywalkers anywhere are going to be killing their fathers. Just because he didn’t have an actual father and his one sort-of-father figure left him to burn to death doesn’t mean they are _all_ doomed to these terrible father/son interactions. (He can hear Sidious laughing somewhere in the past…it’s not like he didn’t know meaning behind the name that he had carried). And he says so to the Council and their hangers-on.

Yoda’s ears stop twitching, and he can see Kit’s tentacles ripple (hopefully in agreement), Mace is still scowling (and really maybe his mother had a point when she said that your face could get stuck in that expression), Ki-Adi looks disapproving, Aayla looks disapproving, Saesee Tiin looks disapproving, Luminara looks _very_ disapproving, possibly even livid and the list goes on.

It’s hard to tell this time, it could be the usual general disapproval at the continuing reminder that Anakin got married and fathered children, specific disapproval at the possibility of _another_ Skywalker turning to murder or possibly broad disapproval regarding the particular non-Skywalker parent who is in danger.

It’s funny really how they had all expected Anakin to detest his son-in-law. And while it’s true that their initial father/future-son-in-law meeting had been terrible it isn’t like Anakin had been thinking very rationally at the time. Besides, he had intentionally frozen himself in carbonite once, there were far worse things that could be done to you as Anakin knew from personal experience.

Since achieving a more even keel and a better frame of reference, he has come down firmly on the side of the smuggler-turned-general in the realm of Force-Ghosts-Incorporated™. Why the rest of the miscellaneous jedi and not-Sith force-users thought a slave-turned-jedi-general would object is frankly confusing. Besides, there is just enough of his younger self left that he enjoys subverting their expectations. Snobs, the whole lot of them.

Granted Han is rather cocky and a bit too sure of himself, but he is a great pilot and he’s got excellent taste in friends (Chewbacca not Lando) and he’s _not_ a stuck-up politician or prince and he is clearly very in love with Leia, so what’s not to like? Anyone who has the nerve to point blank shoot a Sith has Anakin’s respect (even if he was the Sith in question).

The man even argues with her, Leia might not like to even consider that he exists but the fact remains that as much as she is Padme’s daughter, she is also his. And any man, smuggler or not who is willing to stand up to the (albeit reluctant) daughter of Darth Vader is worth his weight in spice.

Anakin has had lots of friends who were smugglers, he has been a smuggler, he used to smuggle stuff into the temple all the time when he was younger, droids, and repulsers and broken speeder parts. He is possibly overthinking the smuggling thing and considering that the whole assemblage is looking at him with their usual combination of _why exactly did Master Jinn think he was Chosen?_ and _why didn’t someone stab Skywalker years ago so we wouldn’t have to deal with him?_ and of course his personal favorite (in hindsight) _never mind why the Chancellor wants to spend time with an uneducated slave boy, at least he’s out of our hair/lekku/tentacles/baldspot._

It’s funny how if he truly considers it, everything could have been so very different if just of few of the pieces had fit together differently. But they didn’t and here they all are, the Council with the weight of their mistakes (ignoring them as usual), Obi-Wan with the weight of his responsibilities and Anakin with the weight of his sins (which he’s not exactly ignoring, but if he thinks of them all at once he’ll definitely go mad again).

“… will not interfere in the affairs of the living” finishes Mace Windu with whatever passes for smugness in him.

“You won’t interfere,” says Anakin calmly, “But considering that I am not a jedi, I see no reason why I should not try to stop this from happening, regardless of your official stance.”

“Do we really need to point out why you are no longer counted among the jedi?” asks Luminara (possibly she has never forgiven Anakin for the fact that her padawan Fell when his did not), “Any meddling that _you_ attempt among the living is likely to turn out at least as badly as your meddling when you were _among_ the living…”

“I have to do this,” Anakin returns, a little less calmly, “I am trying to make it right…I will make it right.”

“Right?” snorts Saesee Tiin, “The last time you had a fit of conscience, you slaughtered the Jedi, destroyed the Republic and enslaved the galaxy, not to mention yourself to a Sith Master.”

(Which is not quite true, his last fit of conscience as Saesee calls it had resulted in him killing the Sith and himself, and what does Saesee think he knows about slavery? but he doubts anyone will care).

“Surely you can’t think that letting the same thing that happened to me happen again is a good idea?” he asks starting to feel desperate, (they probably can’t stop him, but he really, really doesn’t want to fight anyone- he’s already on such shaky ground), “We all know what happens when greedy darksiders single out powerful force-sensitive children,” he gestures with broken metal fingers, bringing attention to the wreak that was made of his body and soul, “This is what Palpatine made of me, you have all seen what he made of the galaxy, this _cannot_ happen again.”

“Worse meddling could be, interfere we should not.” says Yoda.

“Worse _how?_ ” Anakin yells, finally losing his temper, “Let’s allow the galaxy to fall to bits, so that it is practically unrecognizable to those of us who remember it before, allow Sidious to find some way to creep back, to infect my grandson, to resurrect some bastard imitation of the Empire, brilliant idea!”

“Anakin” Obi-Wan says gently, “Perhaps it is time to let the past die.”

“Really?” Anakin shoots back, “Is that what you did? I seem to recall you turning up to influence things quite a lot. There is a lot of good in the past, and some things should be remembered. I can’t believe I lived…in a manner of speaking to see the day when I want the jedi to be preserved and you don’t!”

He turns staring down the lot of them, “I am going to help, and Force forbid any of you try to stop me. If my grandson wants to imitate his grandfather, he is going to know exactly what sort of horrible idea that is. Feel free to stop by and let him know what a terrible person I was if you want to. I’m sure all of you can conjure up plenty of stories about everything that I did wrong; you might even enjoy it!”

He can’t see it, but for a moment he is standing there bright and whole as he had been so many years and choices earlier. Kit Fisto nods and Plo Koon is smiling.

Now all he must do is get past his formidable daughter.

(Hopefully, they won’t stop by to tell _her_ stories, the last thing that he needs is his daughter hating him more than she already does).


	2. Obi-Wan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not a new chapter, I am merely organizing this fic into something better suited to the various points of view. 
> 
> Obi-Wan should be proud.

It is strange watching this, Obi-Wan thinks. Mildly surreal, to once again be watching his padawan ( _friend/comrade-in-arms/enemy/brother)_ taking the Council to task over something he feels is wrong. To watch the Council once again disapprove and discourage and belittle. (Had it always been so obvious?)

With everything that has passed over the years, it is vaguely comical to see the Council, ageless and unbending, all looking as they did when they still sat in authority. To see Anakin as the one who has changed, because changed he has. For some reason that Obi-Wan does not entirely understand Anakin (despite no longer being Vader) has persisted in wearing the appearance of his murderer.

Perhaps Anakin feels that he deserves it or is simply being contrary. Mostly he fears that despite what Luke attests to and what Obi-Wan impossibly hopes, Vader is not entirely gone.

He can feel Anakin’s anger, even here in the afterlife his emotions are very visible, (strange that it was only as a Sith that had he managed a certain degree of detachment). But the anger is bright and cleansing and Obi-Wan finds himself wondering, not for the first time, if he had gotten everything wrong.

If they all had?

If the problem was not Anakin’s righteous anger at injustice but the frustrated fury that came of being used and ordered and demeaned. If possibly by trying to mold Anakin to fit into the Jedi they (and he) had bent him into something entirely unrecognizable. Standing here, with the clarity to look back on their lives he wonders if they had been so different from Sidious after all.

Sidious who had taken the twisted wreak of his body (that Obi-Wan himself had cut to pieces) and hammered it into a vison of a monster, Obi-Wan has always blamed Sidious for the destruction of Anakin’s soul as well as the mechanical monstrosity of his body. Except he had fought his brother to the bitter end, had left his body to burn and warp, had the same thing happened to his soul? Had Sidious only been using the broken pieces that the Order had left behind?

He had known that Anakin _struggled,_ but he had never known how to deal with it. Even here in the relative peace of death he still doesn’t know how to help. His brother is back, but he is so very broken that Obi-Wan is being to think that eternity might not be long enough to fit all the pieces back together.

All his memories are confused now, for years in Tatooine he had wondered if Anakin had just been a façade, that the monster had always been there, and he had just been blind. If all the teasing, the tears and the joys, the sacrifice and adventures had ever been real? Had Anakin really lost one arm in saving Obi-Wan’s life and the other to Obi-Wan’s saber?

After the initial joy of realizing that Luke had been right, that Anakin had done one last impossible thing and died free, the reunion had been awkward at best. Mustafar had not been forgotten and nether had the Death Star. Beyond Anakin’s cautious apologies (and some mutual tears that absolutely _no one_ else had seen) there was still some lingering uneasiness. Something that had hurt them both far more than the physical wounds had.

Every time he tries to discuss it Anakin either changes the conversation or shuts down, as Ahsoka had told him he had once long ago after he had thought that Obi-Wan had been killed. Obi-Wan isn’t sure what he does or where he goes, but if he could hazard a guess somehow his errant padawan has found an afterlife alternative to tinkering with mechanics.

All this discussion of interfering gives him a far better educated guess.

Obi-Wan just smiles a little and wonders what the council would say if they knew that their nemesis has already been tinkering with the living world. In the meantime, he will just keep a wary eye out and hope that someday soon the trust will be repaired. They can never go back to the way things were but perhaps they can make something better.


End file.
